Wednesday, August 18, 2010

a plea to the anonymous commenter

(Sorry to everyone who isn`t the anonymous commenter. This has been driving me crazy.)

To the anonymous commenter on my now-deleted post--

Please tell me who you are. I`m assuming that I know you because I doubt that anyone I don`t know personally would be reading this blog. I`d like to talk with you more, or at least find out if you hate me or not. So please send me a message on here or Facebook if you would also like to talk. I hate feeling like you hate me even though I don`t know who you are. I appreciated your jarring comment on my previous post about someone that I mistook for a potential terrorist. I posted that entry because it was a very odd thing to happen to me, and I wanted to get other people`s opinions on the topic. I`m very sorry if I offended you; the whole incident shocked me in real life. I`ve been wondering if what I did was flat-out wrong or right or maybe somewhere in the middle. I knew that I didn`t deserve some medal of honor or anything, but I didn`t feel that my decision was completely wrong.

Anyways, if you would like to talk more, or at least tell me who you are, I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

--Anxious blogger

P.S. For everyone who has no idea what I`m talking about:I wrote a blog post the other day about my flight to Bali. On the first of 2 flights, a man was acting strangely (in my opinion). He was in the seat across the aisle from us. Before the plane took off, he was pacing the aisle and saying what sounded like `Jihad, jihad, jihad` over and over. I`m already a nervous flyer, so hearing something like that terrified me even more. I notified a flight attendant. Basically, the man was under observation the entire flight. The flight attendants even offered to handcuff the man, which I (thankfully) declined. I couldn`t help but watch him out of my peripheral vision though. He acted a little odd throughout the flight, but it was probably because we had pointed him out.

At the same moment that I noticed the man was saying `Jihad,` I also noticed that he looked Middle Eastern. I`m ashamed to admit that it made me more afraid, I think because of the culture of fear we live in in America. (I mentioned this detail in the original blog post.) It`s an extremely touchy thing to say, but I added this detail because I thought it was important. It shows how much I`ve let stereotypes affect my thinking.

It took until right before we landed (3 or 4 hours) for us to realize that the man`s brother, who was sitting further back in our section, was named something that sounded like `Jihad.` Jiyad or something. (We had to assume that this was his brother`s name, because they weren`t speaking a language that I recognized.) I was shaken and embarrassed, so I got off the plane as quickly as possible without apologizing to the man. He also apparently didn`t understand English, so maybe it wouldn`t have mattered anyways.

Anyways, I wrote this long post about it all and got a very negative comment from someone who wouldn`t put their name with their comment. It`s been driving me crazy for the last couple days. I deleted the post in a panic because I didn`t want people to read it and think that I`m some crazy racist. I even remember telling the flight attendant something like, `I dont`t want to be racist, but it sounded like he was saying jihad.`

As usual, I`ve probably made this all into something a lot more severe and dramatic in my head than it actually is. Let`s all hope that this is the case.

This will be my last post on the subject. We will soon return to my normal randomness.